Yeah its definitely a relative topic, I mean the pricepoint. Dollars has x30 exchange value in our land:D
I know hookpad since many years but Ive never been used continually. I subscribed only for 4 to 5 months and canceled my plan because of costs. I usually writing my songs in Ableton. When I compare Hookpad with the most off the daws or apps, Hookpad is always the worst for me in terms of usability, flexibility, interaction, reliability etc. I mean come on, in experience its like coming from the past:D. Im in a M1 Macbook and the app is always stucking at the start. Sometimes its not opening or it just starting the work after 10 minutes waiting, funny ha? Web interface is also pretty lacky and unresponsive for me. Yeah I know there maybe obvious limitations for web apps and this is why companies develop their own great apps and plugins right? Iām comparing the service with high-end modern daws and apps because I feel like the price point is there. Hookpad one time payment is around 200 $, Ableton 12 Intro is half of it. Actually its coming free as a Lite version with most midi controllers and audio interfaces. With such daws youāre buying cutting edge music writing and producing tools, instruments and audio processing stuff. You can even use those in live situation or during jamming. I mean serious. You can dive into MAX devices, VSTs which has more or less offers in terms of content.I wont count all of those because there would be huge comparison. Also, the thing is at the end of the day you have to export your Hookpad project to make your own āāoriginalāā recording in a daw or something.
So in my opinion it costs way much than if offers. I bought Scaler 2 for 20 bucks and I paid to Hookpad 24 for 3 month subscribtion. I donāt feel its fair.
So what is your main goal to keep using it If you still pay for?
i just gave up one of my Starbuck extra-vin-grande grass-fed goatmilk moccomolatta with sucrose and it pays for my $5/month HP subscription AND part of my Slate plugins subscription. iām thinking of giving up two to fully fund the Slate plugins. i guess āfairnessā is all about the value you get from a product.
all my composition is done on piano or guitar. and notepad++.
once i have a strong composition, then for me, the Hookpad app is essential to creating the song structures and basic drums, bass, harmonies and melodies. this is brought into my DAW along with contributions from EZ keys and bass, Scaler 2, Ample riffer, BIAB, and often a few other āgeneratorsā to create the final product.
so, to have the tool which readily allows me to create my music and only sacrifice a single coffee each month, not a problem.
It is not a real comparison to compare HookPad to a DAW. They do different things. I have Hookpad and Scaler. I like them both but they have different goals. I use HookPad a lot more than anything and feel that it was worth the value for the one time purchase. I do not use it for the output. I use it more for prototyping and sketching out ideas. I then export it as MIDI and render it with something else. The only thing I will occasionally use the actual output would be guitar strumming, that doesnāt translate to MIDI well.
You could make the same argument that an M1 MacBook is not worth the price as well. I use a $250 refurbished computer running Linux and render the music with MuseScore which is free. Sometimes I use Cakewalk and Bandlab which are also free for DAWs. With my computer, HookPad, and Scaler, I am still far below the cost of a Macbook. It came with an I7 and 32GB of ram and handles the task quite well.
Thank you for the comment.Actually I dont understand this resource transfer comparison trend without context.I go maybe once a year to SB:)
As you mention value is pretty controversial topic and I think it depends on how much the consumer use or need it. I donāt understand some developers strategies within this part. I think subscribtion models becoming so irritative sometimes. In different apps and fields there needs to be different scales at price point. Lets say there would be more limited version as a basic plan for this app. They can limit the export amount monthly or other features. With that way softwares can be more accessible and users can see If its really helping. I believe It also helps the software develop better. You know this is not an Excel app that you re just using for an absolute task in a giving time. Its a creation tool most people probably not using all the time. If they, Im sure the price point is okey for them. But for most of the independent creators its even not easy to make 8 dolar stream value in a year. Because the success in music business is a long term goal. Something you need push too much, invest to different areas, develop yourself, release more etc.
at the end of the day - the economics of the design, build, deploy, operate, support, and evolve will drive the pricing models used by software developers. i would say many companies will offer a light āfreeā version with any number of limitations on features; an āeducationā discount; an individual pricing schedule - either perpetual w/ some support agreement; and āenterpriseā discounts for large number of licenses.
as far as earnings go, the software company cannot exist without paying itās employees, contractors, and service contracts for operations and support. and assuming the word of mouth is all thatās needed for success, there is marketing overhead etc. and perhaps some left over for the owner.
for myself, growing up without much in the way of parental monies or odd job earnings, i learned to take care of and adjust the (very) inexpensive guitar (a good skill for any guitar owner really), and would leverage the schools band room instruments, and learing to perform on a bunch of them reasonably well, and more importantly, what role they played in music. writing compositions on paper. (i still have some in a box somewhere) and then scrapping together a cassette recorder and a plastic mic. then a second cassette recorder so now i was officially āmulti-trackingā LOL.
fast forward several decades - even the most inexpensive chromebook with all free software on it will exceed the technical quality of the most expensive analog recording studios in the world. you just have to learn how to use it.
i use Hookpad pretty much a couple times a week, so i make the effort to pay for it. if i was unemployed (thus having lots of free time LOL) i would sell stuff i donāt need (so i can eat) and take on odd jobs (to pay rent and for my Hookpad subscription) and sleep less so i donāt lose out on my composition time, and if the desire to āmake itā was strong enough, i would study the heck out of song writing to create massive hits and try to ingratiate myself with serious producers to get my songs to big artists and get that paycheck.
read up on the history of The Beatles for the blueprint of rags to richesā¦
I am completely with you on the trend for subscription based software. I donāt mind paying for software but I also want to be in control of my own computer and data. I personally do not participate in any subscription in any form as a matter of principle.
Hookpadās instruments sound better than most of my free VST samples, its so easy to plug in chords and get a nice headstart in Reaper. 5/month is an amazing price to a broke musician like me even if im not making money off it, its pretty essential to getting my starting sound right every song. Iāll gladly keep paying as long as they dont fundamentally change the things I like about it with no way to go back.
Also, literally the only app that android has to offer for making music like this. Android sucks compared to iphone at music turns outā¦like, my old iphone 5c has garageband and allows zero-latency live monitoringā¦my 2024 android is stuck at 200ms delay monitoringā¦But hookpad works on it
Hmm - I donāt use hookpad as a DAW. I use hookpad to quickly write sketches of melodies, export to sheets to play on physical instrument sometimes (this is a huge plus - my DAW is VERY bad at rendering notation automatically, and I donāt always have the kind of time musescore input requires), and/or flesh them out further. Once itās done, it goes via MIDI to my DAW for further work. The application drastically increases the amount of total meaningful composing and production I can do while working >40 hours a week.
I used hookpad for free for over a year before I subscribed, and wrote an album using the free version.
I pay for it because it is a continually developed SaaS with the normal overheads that a web service requires, and also think the hookpad devs probably work better when they eat. I donāt like subscriptions myself, and prefer offline software I can install once and use forever, but I have never seen a good replacement for hookpad, and Iāve been more than satisfied with the improvements Iāve seen over the years.
In my mind I suppose I also pay for it so other people who canāt afford it can use it for free.
